


chocolate work

by gadzoots



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:11:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19005529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gadzoots/pseuds/gadzoots
Summary: She refuses to be guilted into feeling bad, especially since it’s Brad. Guilt doesn’tapplywhen it’s Brad.





	chocolate work

**Author's Note:**

> Don't be weird and share this with people who don't need to see it.

No one else in the kitchen really tolerates anyone sitting up on the counters when it takes up valuable space and also gets in the way, but it’s after seven and Claire is still waiting for her chocolate to set in the fridge, and it’s not like Brad minds anyway.

She kicks her feet and eats cold leftovers out of a cereal bowl — someone’s test batch of skillet pot pie that she found sitting on the leftovers counter. She’s got it balanced on her knees and eats as she watches Brad putter around.

“It’s like watching the entire percussion section of an orchestra if they, like, kept dropping things,” Claire says, watching him throw spoons into pans, tap them against the rims of jars, drop a fork on the ground and swoop to pick it up. Brad definitely cooks with a kind of chaotic rhythmic energy that she couldn’t match at the beginning of the day, let alone now in the evening when the entire kitchen is getting flooded with orange sunset light.

He grins distractedly at her. “Yeah, this is my extra dose of that cardio, you know? Gotta keep it fresh and loose.” He punches the air, paring knife held in his fist, and bounces up and down on his feet a couple times.

“That’s really dangerous, stop, you’ll take out someone’s eye,” Claire says, but it’s not like she can stop laughing long enough for it to really sound stern.

Less than an hour ago, she was ready to kill someone over this fucking chocolate, and five minutes in Brad’s company and she feels light again, renewed. Brad’s good at calming her down from meltdowns. She’s not even sure if he does it on purpose or if it’s just in his nature to send out good vibes nonstop. Sometimes there’ll be a slip of a moment when she’ll catch that classic gap-toothed Brad Leone smile changing to something serious, his eyes going thoughtful like he’s making sure that she’s okay, and it’ll just make her wonder.

“What are you making?” she asks, peering into his mixing bowl. It looks like some kind of mustard. “Can I taste?”

“Sure, yeah, give that a nibble.” He dips in a spoon and brings it up to her mouth so she can taste.

“Oh yeah, that’s really good. Wow,” she says, licking her lips. “A little honey?”

Brad’s eyes flick back up from her mouth. Has he been standing this close this entire time? “Good _palate_ , Claire!” he says, effusive as always — and as always she can find no trace of irony in his voice even when she looks for it. “Yeah, I just put a little smidge of a dollop in there to see what it would do, you know.”

“No, it’s really good,” she says, and feels warm and happy when his eyes crinkle up at her.

He keeps working, and she finishes up the last of her food. And then she doesn’t have an excuse for holding off the inevitable anymore, even if it is soothing to zone out and just watch Brad work for a bit. She tips her head back and sighs her frustration.

“Why the long face, Claire?” Brad asks, as he chops up some vegetables.

“I don’t want to check on my chocolate. I know it’s going to be crap,” Claire says. She knows she’s whining, but if anyone can handle her whining, it’s Brad.

“Well, even if it is crap, you gotta check on it before you can make the next one, isn’t that right?” Brad says, and it really is the worst that he knows her this well, knows exactly what she needs to hear. Even if it isn’t what she _wants_ to hear.

She makes a face. “I hate when you’re reasonable, it’s really inconvenient.”

He puts his hand over his heart like she’s wounded him, which she personally thinks is unnecessary. “Oh, I’m sorry, what would be convenient for you?”

“I mean, it would be super nice if you could temper some chocolate for me,” she tells him.

He laughs. “Come on, can you imagine me doing chocolate work? Good one, Claire.”

She _can’t_ imagine him doing chocolate work, but then again, he’s surprised her before. He’s gotten really good with working dough now, and even if he tells everyone it’s all her influence, she suspects that’s just him being modest. Still, she does really like that he defers to her any time there’s baking involved.

“Okay, well, will you go with me to check on this chocolate? Be my emotional support?” she asks.

He looks at her, rolls her eyes, and then looks at her again. “Oh, don’t do that. You know I can’t say no when you do that.”

“Do what?” she says, innocent.

He throws down his knife emphatically, and she grins in victory. “Looking all sad at me like that — yeah, of course I’ll come with you, Jeez, Claire. Let me just go wash my hands. Not like I was in the middle of something or anything.”

“Great, thanks Brad!” Claire says, brightly, and hops down from the counter. She refuses to be guilted into feeling bad, especially since it’s Brad. Guilt doesn’t _apply_ when it’s Brad. She lets him make a loud fuss all the way to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, and then leads him to the fridge where she’s stashed her tray of chocolate, as far in the back as she could fit it, so that no one else would stumble upon her shame.

Her heart sinks as soon as she takes it out. She sets it down on the counter and glares at it, as if expressing her disappointment will allow her to bend the chocolate molecules to her will.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Brad asks, peering at the tray over her shoulder.

“It’s not right,” she says, prodding at the edge of a chocolate with the tip of her finger. It’s soft and pasty feeling. It hasn’t set at all. “Fuck, I’m going to have to do this all over again tomorrow.” She was prepared for it, but it still _sucks_. She is absolutely convinced that the only people who are effortlessly good at chocolate work must have sold their soul to some kind of chocolate god at some point. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

That, or she’s just really bad at chocolate. She exhales sharply, and is really, really glad they’re not shooting today. There’s probably enough footage of her having a meltdown on camera to merit a thirty minute supercut, which definitely keeps her up at night sometimes.

Brad puts a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, come on, it isn’t the end of the world,” he says, and she feels almost pathetically grateful — that he’s here, that she doesn’t have to do this by herself.

“Easy for you to say,” Claire says, and turns her entire body into his chest.

He hugs her, easy, his chin tucked over the top of her head. His chest is reassuringly solid, even if his apron is not exactly clean.

Brad is a good hugger. And, when she pulls him down by the strap of his apron, she finds out that he’s a good kisser too.

It’s that first wall of sheer, batshit panic that almost fucks everything up. She overthinks everything else in her life, and yet _kissing Brad_ is something she decided to do basically on autopilot? She almost pulls away, hopefully to find an appliance in the kitchen that would allow her to be vaporized on the spot — and then Brad makes a soft, surprised noise and _kisses her back_.

She finds herself sitting on the counter again, but this time Brad is right there, standing between her knees — probably because she still hasn’t let go of his apron, is keeping him there so that she can keep kissing him, her tongue in his mouth because _fuck it_ , if she’s going to do this, she’s not going to half ass anything.

“Oh, god, Claire,” Brad says, pulling away so he can breathe wet against her neck, and she likes that he sounds a little rough, a little reverent, likes that he can’t help continuing to kiss up the side of her throat even though he’s clearly feeling just as thrown off by this as she is. It still feels _right_.

“Everyone left, right? Chris left?” she says, in the brief moment when she’s not focusing on Brad’s hand slipping under her shirt, and she can think about how _stupid_ this is.

“Yeah, Morocco headed out like half an hour ago,” Brad says, and it’s really distracting that his hand has found its way up to her bra strap, is playing with it like he’s either waiting for her to give him permission, or yell at him.

She does neither, but she does still push him away when he tries to kiss her again. “Wait, we can’t just do this here. Let me think.”

Brad’s eyes are impossibly blue, and damningly fond. “Lemme know what you come up with. Tell me the strategy,” he says, definitely making fun of her. But then he smooths back her hair a little, and rubs a thumb across her bottom lip, gentle, and that’s just _not fair_.

“Conference room,” she decides — it’s still a bad idea but at least they’ll be able to _lock the door_.

His eyes light up, like they do when she has a good idea, except this time it’s not about a recipe. “Conference room it is,” he says.

  
  


Probably the most frustrating thing about Brad, and also, she’ll admit, the most charming, is that he has about the attention span of a goldfish. It means he gets off track easily — Claire has seen firsthand how much wrangling is involved to get him to focus while they’re shooting an episode. When he gets excited, it’s a slim bet on whether he’ll even be able to finish a sentence without losing his train of thought and hopping onto another one altogether.

It also means that he’ll focus on about three things at once, and somehow still give the impression that he’s committing one hundred percent. He’ll drop everything and give her a hand when she needs it.

He’s not distracted right now, which makes one of them. He seems to have a single-minded determination to get her off right now, which she isn’t complaining about, keeps finding herself grinding down on his fingers, hears the breathless noises she’s making with some kind of distant mortification.

Her attention, meanwhile, feels like it’s settled on too many things at once: on the ragged noises Brad is making muffled into her hair, the way that he’s big enough to cover all of her with her back settled against the conference table, that he somehow managed to unhook her bra anyway at some point and swipes the rough pad of a thumb across her nipple until she arches into his hands, which is so _annoying_.

She tells him this, and he laughs, a little choked.

“Really,” he says. “Can you just, for one second.”

Of course he doesn’t finish that sentence either. “God, you’re so useless,” she says, only it comes out all breathless, so it’s clear she doesn’t mean it.

“What did you expect me to do, Claire,” he says. “You’re just — you’re so —” And he sounds lost enough that she takes pity on him, holds his wrist in place and gets herself off on his fingers, until she shakes with her release, and he says, once, helplessly, “ _Fuck_.”

He looks down at her, and it’s not exactly the first time he’s looked at her like he can’t believe she’s _this good_ . Usually, she ignores it because dealing with Brad being Brad takes enough energy as it is without thinking about whether or not he has _feelings_ for her.

"C'mere." He cups her face in his hand and leans into kiss her, chapped lips and dirty apron and all, and she thinks to herself, well, there’s that mystery solved.


End file.
